Messed Up My G4 Sawtooth

Hi there...
It all started when I tried to install Classic in my G4 running OSX Tiger.
I followed Apple instructions, I put an OS 9 cd downloaded from mactorrents and booted holding C ont the keyboard trying to boot from cd in order to install classic folder. The action faild. I tried to run classic and got the message there was no OS 9 system folder in my HD. Then I did this stupid thing, and copied the system folder from the cd to the HD, and asked the machine to reboot in OS 9. That was it. Mac wont boot at all, I just fet a flashing folder with a <?> on it. I tried to clear the pram among many things, but it does not work, and in the strartup screen, I can see the HD icon with the finder logo on it but no CD ROM drive... The thing is that I bought this mac second hand and I have no original software installation discs of any kind.
Any suggestions please???

Greetings from Greece

Bill

You can trying rebooting your system and when you hear the strt up chome, press and hold the x key. You also can try the same thing with the option key.

If you are able to start up again, go system preferences -> start up and choose the OS X system.

thanks for the reply, but there is no start up chime...
Just a gray screen and a flashing folder...

Well when you first turn it on then try what Rman suggested and hold down Option when you first press the power button. Does that give you any options at all or still that flashing question mark?

I can see the HD icon with the finder logo when I boot holding the option key. But no CD icon

Is your OS 9 CD a decent version? It is downloaded from the internet after all.

If you've messed up your hard drive installation and have a dodgy CD, you won't be able to boot with either.

Any workarounds? I can't hear the first chime at all....

How about inserting a new drive into the machine, unhooking the original. At least you can do an install and make it the startup drive while getting the others to mount.

Another trick I used is to unhook the HD and it can only find the CD/DVD and should start up. After it got onto it's feet I reconnected the power feed to the faulty HD and proceeded to install the OS. It may toast the drive but it did work.

Well I managed to get the original osx 10.4.8 installation disks from a friend.
I put disc 1 in the optical drive and I boot holding down option key. I see the HD and the OSX CD at the startup manager, I choose boot from cd and I see the big apple logo for a few seconds. Then I get a message in a few languages that I must restart the computer.
O.k, I reboot and I am still in the same situation. If I boot with no option key depressed I still get the flashing folder with the ?, and if I boot from the CD I get the same message, You must restart your computer....
Now what????

The screen while booting from the 10.4.8 DVD in many languages is a Unix Kernel Panic. One of the biggest causes I have found of Kernel Panics are bad RAM but I am wondering in your case as it worked before you messed with that OS9 thing you downloaded. I wonder if it's something on the hard drive and when the OSX Tiger DVD checks it the KP happens. Not sure in this case since you said it worked fine before your OS9 install.

I had an older G4 powermac that got a KP with both a Panther 10.3 and Tiger 10.4 Media but not with 10.2. Turned out to be bad Cache on the CPU board. For the fun of it, disconnect the hard drive and try booting with that DVD. Just a stab in the dark so to speak.

I tried that with no results...
I also tried to switch between the memory modules but still get the kernel panic, no matter which module I use. So I guess that bad memory is not the issue here...

By the way, the discs I 've got are the gray ones and not the black. I read in here that it makes some kind of difference. Is trhat so?

bassbill said:

By the way, the discs I 've got are the gray ones and not the black. I read in here that it makes some kind of difference. Is that so?

Click to expand...

Ah, thank you for that info. Yes, the Gray ones are the DVD's that come with a specific Mac model and only work with that exact spec Mac. KP's do often happen with the wrong Gray DVD. Yes you need the Black DVD as that works with all models and is not specific to a particular Mac.

So that is probably the cause of your KP.

I see... well now I am in Quest of the black DVD's

Happy end after all
Problem solved!!! I managed to get a black dvd after all and I managed to boot from it. Then I choose to boot from HD OSX folder and VOILA!!!
Thanks for the help everybody... It was really a family support...

Great news. Glad you got it up and running.

Thanks a lot. Well I though I should bring the post up once more, cause after all I am still troubled with the matter that started it all, I still have this Os 9 system folder in my HD but I cant run Classic Environment, getting the message that the system folder can run only from the drive it is installed to, and won't run if it is copied to another drive which is my case.
The thing is that I don't know if there should be a system folder in my HD in
OS X if I did not have copied the one from the OS 9 CD.
Although this System Folder has an OS 9 logo on it, and I can't delete it anyway, cause the system needs it and won't let me to.
So I am stuck again with no Classic. Any ideas??

Did you do the Tiger install yourself can you recall? In order to then do a Classic install, and OS 9.2.2 is the best, it is necessary to select install OS 9 drivers at the time of format and installing Tiger.

No i did not. the machine came with OS X installed and obviously whoever did the installation skipped the classic at the time.